There are many people in Donald Trump‘s orbit that are now facing legal trouble. The CFO of the Trump Organization, Allen Weisselberg, was recently arrested. And Rudy Giuliani, the former president’s friend and sometimes lawyer has his New York City apartment searched.
Today, Tom Barrack, a Trump fundraiser who headed up the 2017 inauguration fund was arrested on serious charges. While the charges don’t necessarily involve Trump, Elie Honig explained why the evidence is overwhelming.
Host Jake Tapper asked, “According to the charges, Tom Barrack had a dedicated cell phone with a secure message app with the purpose for communicating with senior UAE officials. Based on what you’ve seen so far, does this sound like a compelling case to you?”
“The evidence looks not just strong but overwhelming to me,” Honig said. “This is a 46-page indictment, it goes into great detail. Really the main crime here has three components. One, was Barrack lobbying the United States government, and not just lobbying but successfully in the ways that Evan just laid out. Two, was he doing so on behalf of UAE? It looks like DOJ has emails and texts proving just that. And, third, did Barrack fail to register with DOJ as a foreign lobbyist? It looks like they have a very strong case to me.”
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CNN's Elie Honig says that the evidence against Trump ally Tom Barrack is overwhelming. pic.twitter.com/dUkzdNqmTb
— PoliticusUSA (@politicususa) July 20, 2021
The legal analyst continued was then asked if Barrack could flip. Absolutely possible,” he responded. Any defendant has to think hard about that because, generally speaking, the best way to save yourself to reduce your own risk of prison time is by cooperating with prosecutors. Important to keep in mind in the federal system, anyone who cooperates has to tell everything they know about anything they did or anything anyone else did and be willing to testify. Barrack was in charge of the 2016 inaugural committee, which at one point was reportedly being investigated by DOJ as well.”
Todd Neikirk is a New Jersey based politics and technology writer. His work has been featured in psfk.com, foxsports.com and hillreporter.com. He enjoys sports, politics, comic books and spending time at the shore with his family.
